Bilateral trade with Thailand expected to reach $20 billion by 2020

Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said June 14 he hopes bilateral trade with Thailand will rise to $20 billion by 2020, nearly double from more than $11 billion in 2015.

Phuc made the comment in a meeting with Thailand’s new Ambassador to Vietnam, Manopchai Vongphakdi, according to a statement from the Vietnamese government portal on Tuesday.

Thailand has invested more than $7 billion in Vietnam. “This [trade and investment] is the strong point in the relationship between the two countries. Many industrial parks and projects invested by Thailand in Vietnam are very successful,” Phuc said.

Catfish, one of the products Vietnam exports to Thailand. Photo by Vietnam News Agency/Vu Sinh

As Vietnam and Thailand are two leading rice exporters in the world, the Prime Minister urged the two countries to closely cooperate in this field for mutual benefit.

The Thai government announced on April 25 that it would sell 11.4 million tons of stockpiled rice in May and June for a targeted Baht100 billion ($2.81 billion). This is the biggest stockpile sale in the history of the world’s second largest rice exporter, and higher than the target of nine million tons set for this year.

Ambassador Manopchai said bilateral trade between Vietnam and Thailand reached $3 billion in the first quarter and will rise to $13 billion this year. He also emphasized that Thai investors are paying attention to Vietnam’s retail market.

Thailand’s Central Group announced on April 29 that it had bought Big C’s operations in Vietnam from France's Casino Group at a cost of 1 billion euros ($1.14 billion).

Another Thai company, the consumer goods group TCC Holding Co. Ltd, in January this year completed its acquisition of the Vietnamese operations of Metro for 655 million euros ($704.1 million).